| The SF, Horror and Fantasy Film Review |
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| Science-Fiction |
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| Horror |
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| Fantasy |
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CASPER
Rating: 
USA. 1995.
Director – Brad Silberling, Screenplay – Deanna Oliver & Sherri Stoner, Based on the Cartoon Character Created by Joseph Oriolo & Syd Reit, Producer – Colin Wilson, Photography – Dean Cundey, Music – James Horner, Visual Effects – Industrial Light and Magic (Supervisor – Dennis Muren), Animation Supervisors – Eric Armstrong & Phil Nibbelink, Special Effects Supervisor – Michael Lantieri, Production Design – Leslie Dilley. Production Company – Amblin/Universal/Harvey Entertainment Co.
Cast:
Christina Ricci (Kathleen ‘Kat’ Harvey), Bill Pullman (Dr James Harvey), Cathy Moriarty (Carrigan Crittenden), Eric Idle (Dibs), Amy Brenneman (Amelia Harvey), Garrette Ratliffe Henson (Vic), Jessica Weston (Amber)
Voices:
Malachi Pearson (Casper), Joe Nipote (Stretch), Brad Garrett (Fatso), Joe Alaskey (Stinkie)
Plot: Super-bitchy Carrigan Crittenden receives the deed to a rundown old manor in Friendship, Maine in her father’s will. She throws it away as worthless but then discovers it has a treasure map written on it. However when she and her assistant Dibs arrive at the house in search of the treasure they are driven out by three evil and obnoxious ghosts, Stretch, Stinkie and Fatso. Also living there is the kindly young Casper. Casper is taken by a tv item on Dr James Harvey who claims to be a therapist to the dead and falls for Harvey’s teenage daughter Kat. Casper moves Carrigan’s tv, prompting her to see the item whereupon she hires Dr Harvey to clear the house. Once inside the manor Kat, who lacks friends because of her father’s constant moving around, soon befriends Casper. But her attempts to help Casper find out who he used to be are endangered by the greedy Carrigan’s treasure hunting.
Created by Joe Oriolo and Sy Reit, Casper the Friendly Ghost first appeared in a series from cartoons from Paramount in 1945. There were 55 of these were made between 1945 and 1949, but Casper’s life didn’t really begin until the character was turned into a children’s comic-book character by Harvey Comics beginning in 1949 and appearing in some two dozen titles since then.
This big-budget live-action film adaptation could be aptly compared to its title character – cute, but insubstantial. This effort is made with the post-Beetlejuice (1988) take on events supernatural, which at least offered some potential liveliment to the stew. But sadly such is not the case. The film gives the appearance of having been construed more as a shrewd collusion of the peoples involved than as any artistic exercise – Spielberg is there as Executive Producer because the film is cute; the digital effects team appear to be there simply because they can do it; and the commercial tie-in people are in on the act for merchandising opportunities. But other than the three abovementioned influences conducting their various businesses the film lacks anything of any real distinction. It all works quite efficiently for the most part. The effects work is expectedly very good. And Christina Ricci, caught just between being the great young find of the Addams Family films and becoming an indie movie queen, plays quite well in a role well beneath her talent.
But even before it arrives at its climax, the film’s slight charms have mostly run out. It is impelled along by some loud and noisy and slapstick, although the pace seems to run to a halt about two-thirds of the way through (about the time the laboratory is discovered). Throughout the production design team appear to have bent over backwards to avoid any traditional haunted house look. The cupolas and lanterns seem so overdesigned, so obviously intended to impress that the effect is contrarily negligible. Indeed the sets seem so cluttered with self-conscious ornamentation they often cramp the action. There’s a setpiece with a chair descending through an automated shaving, showering and powdering system to the laboratory, a sequence that is absurdly oversized and of stunningly little point – the sequence of several minutes long serves absolutely no purpose that someone opening a door could not have. And once in the laboratory the resurrection machine is for no apparent reason, other than design flourish, buried under water and activated by a vast steam power system. Both this needless oversize and a banal ending where Casper is allowed to return to human form and the appearance of Amy Brenneman as an unconvincing angel wears the film out.
The film’s most memorable aspect are the amusing cameos – when the ghosts possess Bill Pullman they transform his face in a mirror and he momentarily turns into Clint Eastwood, Mel Gibson and the Cryptkeeper from Tales from the Crypt (1989-96). And there’s also an amusing gag with Dan Aykroyd rushing out of the house in his Ghostbusters (1984) uniform yelling “Call somebody else.”
A number of Casper direct-to-video movies were subsequently spun out by children’s entertainment specialists Saban Entertainment:– Casper: A Spirited Beginning (1997), Casper Meets Wendy (1998) and Casper’s Haunted Christmas (2000).
Director Brad Silberling next continued with afterlife themes in the angel romance City of Angels (1998) and returned to children’s fantasy with Lemony Snicket’s An Unfortunate Series of Events (2004).
Copyright Richard Scheib 1995
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